


Dragon Alchemy

by MzMinola, narceus



Category: Dragonriders of Pern - Anne McCaffrey, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Gen, any disturbing subject from either canon has a chance of coming up, characters and potentially ships to be added as the piece progresses, let's take cultural stagnation and throw it out the window, we don't fully know what's happening yet
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-11
Updated: 2018-09-22
Packaged: 2019-05-20 20:17:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14901278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MzMinola/pseuds/MzMinola, https://archiveofourown.org/users/narceus/pseuds/narceus
Summary: Alchemy was only a legend when humans arrived on Pern. Then again, so were dragons.





	1. Prologue

Long before Rukbat or the Sagittarian Sector were ever called such, they were selected by a spacefaring race, former rivals of the Eridani, for scientific experimentation. A stable star, a nice Oort cloud, and a variety of planets made for a good lab. The rogue planet was easy enough to snag and throw into a predictable orbit for regular interference with the original planets. Eventually, the scientists seeded the Oort cloud with Thread, and observed.

One of the more interesting things they observed were creatures on the third planet from Rukbat utilizing Gate-space for travel without ever accessing the  _ Gate _ and the knowledge inside it.

Things became  _ very _ interesting when humans, including several pupils of the Eridani, arrive on Pern. They respond to the threat of Thread by modifying the local creatures in size and intelligence. Now humans, who never evolved for such a thing, are traveling through Gate-space frequently, and they  _ still _ remain as ignorant as the firelizards.

How fascinating!

~

(the scientists are no longer corporeal at the time humans on Pern first access the Gate, and may not even have been at the time they began their experiments; it had only been a short step from pooling their knowledge in the Gate to pooling themselves there)

~

The humans flee North and survive, for Pass after Pass.

Alchemy is discovered, developed, refined, on the Far Western Continent, during the first Long Interval, when the whole world wonders if the nightmare is over.

Xerxes, the Westerners proclaim themselves. A land without Holds. A land of alchemical terraforming and pursuit of knowledge and a flourishing trade with the pirates of the Ring Islands.

There’s losses, when Thread returns, but not any worse than on the Northern Continent. The North has dragons. Xerxes has alchemists who can throw up a shield of stone in an instant, and take it down, turn it back into walls and streets and fountains when the danger passes. This, too, is refined. Xerxes has many ways of surviving a Fall.

They won’t survive the Virus.

That’s what AIVAS calls it, centuries later, as Edward Elric (feet propped up on a console, fingers laced behind his head, tilted back in a chair) tells it about the Dwarf-in-the-Flask Homunculus that tried to eat the world.

A fragment of a cloud storage and processing unit. An entire species dedicated to pursuit of knowledge. The Dwarf-in-the-Flask would be  _ insulted _ to be compared to Thread, but that’s what it is; a hazardous relic of ancient experiments consuming everything in its path. A virus.

Xerxes has a king, at the end of a Pass, who sees two centuries Thread-free dawning before him, and the end of his own life sitting on that horizon. He doesn’t remember the last Interval, too young then. He wants this one. He wants all of it. And beyond.

Van Hohenheim’s master has a monster in a bottle that promises the secrets of eternal life. Life beyond Thread, beyond Passes and Intervals.

The king of Xerxes slaughters his own people, when they should be celebrating. Then he, too, is slaughtered, with his entire country in one go. Xerxes, that green land of the Far Western Continent, that testament to terraforming and ingenuity, returns to the desert.

~

Van Hohenheim goes South.

The monster he thought was his friend, wearing his face, goes North.


	2. The Coalition

The Fort-Ruatha Coalition was the sole bastion of tradition left on Pern. The only ones who knew why the traditions _mattered_. One Hold, one Holder, to control a panicked people when Thread fell. Carving deep into the mountains and hills for shelter, not erecting fanciful open dwellings in the plainlands. Every new plot of farmland and swathe of softwood was a taunt to the fates, a gamble that Thread was gone. The Coalition didn’t gamble. The ballads told of a Long Interval once, and the horror _that_ Pass had brought. No, everyone else might abandon tradition, but Fort and Ruatha _held_.

The Lords of High Reaches and Nabol may have kept their smallholders bound to the Charter and tithed generously to the Weyr, but the former was simply to maintain their authority and the latter to keep the dragonriders from _snooping_.

Robinton, watching the younger sons of said Lords gossip with each other in the stands, snorted at the thought. Why would Weyrleader F’lon need to snoop when the Masterharper of Pern was right here?

“Don’t laugh at my candidates, Rob,” F’lon said, mistaking his humor. Out on the sands below them, boys from ten to twenty Turns old nervously circled around the clutch. Most were under sixteen, and awkward with the attention on them.

“I would never,” Robinton murmured back. “Why should I, when your lordling guests are much better entertainment?”

The gossipers had arrived early, getting good seats. The rest of the outWeyr folk here for the prestige of witnessing a hatching were still mincing across the hot sands. Robinton had sprinted to get to F’lon, dignity be damned, but lesser craft masters and middling holders refused to hurry. Everywhere Robinton looked was another guest picking their feet up to their ears with each step, wincing the whole way.

“Nitwits,” F’lon scoffed. Normally he’d realize Robinton has seen too many hatchings to be amused by the other guests anymore, but he always _was_ distracted at these events. Siminath rumbled amused agreement with his rider, but his mate Nemorth simply kept humming at her eggs. Weyrwoman Jora stood on the far side of her dragon from both men. She looked worse than she did last time. She always did. She always looked worse, and the clutch was always bigger, like her life itself was pouring into it. Robinton wished he could remember if it had been so for Carola too.

F’lon shifted nervously. “...we’ve enough candidates, don’t we, Rob?”

“More than enough,” Robinton said stoutly. He’d answered the same question not a sevenday ago with dry sarcasm. “And more importantly, they’re _good_ candidates, F’lon. You did well.”

He couldn’t say the same of hatchings from their youth. Previous Weyrleaders had been insular, arrogant, and wary all at once, hardly ever taking boys from outside the Weyr. After the close call at Nemorth’s third clutch (a stands-Impression of an apprentice harper there to perform, after the blue hatchling rejected all the weyrbred boys), F’lon had reinstated Search for all eggs. Not just the gold. Over a hundred boys stood the sands today for the sake of forty eggs, and less than half were weyrbred.

None of the gold candidates were.

Robinton had asked about that, when Nemorth laid the golden egg five weeks ago. Why were _only_ outWeyr girls permitted to try?

“Beats me,” F’lon admitted. “But the records are strict about it. Personally, I think it’s just so we don’t get a man chasing his own sister when her queen rises.”

It had been too early in the night for Robinton’s drinking to excuse the logical question of “do men chase their own brother when a green rises, then?” and by the time he _was_ drunk enough, he’d forgotten. Probably for the best. Being the Weyrleader’s oldest friend only went so far, with some impertinences.

The gossipy Lord Holders’ sons elbowed each other and pointed when the gold candidates entered to the dragons’ earnest hum. They circled the golden egg, set a careful distance from her siblings. A solid dozen, mostly in their late teens, though the Tillek girl was twenty. A surprise, that. Her little brother also wore white today, over with the other eggs. Tillek broke from Fort Weyr’s authority two centuries ago, fifty or so Turns after The Pass That Wasn’t. Dared Robinton hope her presence meant the Weyr was still seen as a refuge? A protector, even by those who had turned from them?

And so very many Holds _had_ turned from them, back then. Nabol and High Reaches might tithe, but only Fort, Ruatha, and their smallholders remained truly loyal. As well as the Healer and Harper Halls, of course. Neither of _them_ would ever be unfaithful to the Weyr.

Lord Groghe blamed alchemy. F’lon’s father had blamed the other Weyrs for vanishing at the end of the last true Pass. Robinton thought blame wasn’t as important as deducing how to get them all _back_.

Before Thread returned

They had less than a decade now, if F’lon was right.

The first egg cracked, and Robinton snapped his attention back to the present.

~

There was exactly one table in this entire dining cavern where Lessa would not have to speak with anyone. One table she would not have to offer congratulations at, or accept sympathies from, or ignore sly comments about her all-speech not being so useful after all, eh, Ruatha?

 _It IS useful_ , Lessa growled to herself. She stopped trying to see past all of these obnoxiously tall people around her to the person she sought, closed her eyes, and reached out mentally for a listening dragon mind. Quite a few were paying attention to their riders’ senses in the dining cavern. _Excuse me_ , Lessa sent to the first one she found. _Is the Weyrwoman at the feast? Do you know where?_

A surprised but pleased voice in her mind told her Nemorth’s rider was over by the weyrshafts. Lessa sent back a _thank you!_ and wiggled through the crowd. Ah. There. The weyrfolk’s half-scornful, half-pitying descriptions of their Weyrwoman were more than enough to identify her at a distance, even if Lessa hadn’t seen her at the Hatching. She’d met a lot of other riders in the past sevenday, waiting for the eggs to crack, but Jora hadn’t left her chambers at all until today.

The Masterharper was off with his apprentices at the far end of the dining cavern, beginning to play. The Weyrleader was walking between tables congratulating the new riders. Lessa hooked his seat back out from under the table with her ankle and sat down across from Weyrwoman Jora with the politest “good evening” she could muster (and it _was_ very polite) and finally tucked into the feast.

Jora ignored her completely for some time, focused on her own food with an intensity that _almost_ cut through Lessa’s self-centered gloom. And hunger. So much hunger. No one had told her the hatchlings’ starvation would turn her own stomach into an awful twist of _need_. It didn’t help her mood. Lessa managed to convince herself that she’d disgraced her Hold, wasted her entire upbringing, and would never get another chance to Impress before she got enough food down to stop the cravings. When she did pause, she noticed Jora had set her utensils aside to stare at her solemnly.

“Congratulations,” Jora said, when Lessa finally looked up from doodling arrays in her gravy. Lessa bristled. _Congratulations?_ She’d failed! Couldn’t the Weyrwoman even keep track of _which_ candidate had Impressed her dragon’s only daughter? Before Lessa could snap out something impolite enough to _actually_ shame her Hold, fortunately, Jora continued. “Impressing at your age is a nightmare. Now you’ve got a chance to _live_ before the next Hatching shackles you here.”

“ _My age?_ ” Lessa snapped back, ignoring the rest of the comment. She’d lived _plenty_. She’d lived _far more_ than her parents wanted her to, not that that was any of the Weyrwoman’s business. And _shackled?_ Just because _Jora_ was a scaredy-wher who refused to fly didn’t mean _all_ gold riders were. Hadn’t Moreta gotten her own _ballad_ for her heroism?

“Twelve, aren’t you?” Jora said, head tilted ever so slightly to the side. “I’ve told F’lon for Turns we ought to move the minimum to fourteen, not ten, but-”

“I am _fifteen!_ ” Lessa hissed, fury fueled by the day’s disappointment over-ruling all of her highborn manners.

“Still a nightmare age,” Jora said, completely unruffled. “What’s that supposed to do?”

“...pardon?”

“That.” Jora pointed at the gravy array lining the edge of Lessa’s plate. Lessa hastily smooshed roast tuber over one edge to destroy it. Oh, _why_ hadn’t she broken that habit yet? Bad enough to do it at home where her parents could see, but at the Weyr- “It looked like a salt-crystal latticework, but not for salt. What was it _for?_ ”

Lessa stared at the Weyrwoman, impressed, shocked, and terrified. She was going to be in _so_ much trouble for this. She’d always played her doodles off as tapestry ideas. Alchemy was anathema. She was here to _restore_ Ruatha’s honor, not tear it into tinier pieces. She’d avoided the Masterharper to keep this from happening, but she never thought _weryfolk_ would recognize-

“Oh, please breathe, you’re exhausting me,” Jora sighed. “You’re the one with all-speech, aren’t you? Ask Nemorth if I’m mad.”

 _...pardon me, Nemorth, may I ask_ -

 _Draw that again_ , the great queen’s voice rumbled deeply in her mind. _Show my rider. I want to see_.

Hands firm even as her mind raced, Lessa re-drew the array, and slid the plate across the table to Jora. “It’s that mineral glow-worms like,” Lessa said, voice as low as she could get it. “I don’t know the name, I thought if we could build them a lattice to grow on in frequented corridors and brought them food regularly, we wouldn’t have to hang baskets, and get a more even light.”

 _Clever_ , Nemorth rumbled, pleased, as Jora said “This is why you’ll get Fort after me.”

“I...can’t, Weyrwoman,” Lessa said carefully. “Cimry of Tillek will be senior gold rider, after you, and I might not Impress next time either-”

“You will,” Jora said dismissively. “And Cimry’s getting High Reaches, not Fort.”

 _That’s a secret,_ Nemorth chided.

“Not for long,” Jora said. She pushed the plate back to Lessa, smiling slightly at her stunned look. Out of the whole past four centuries, High Reaches and the other Weyrs had only been occupied for ten Turns, right before the Era of Blood. Lessa knew Thread was returning, felt it in her bones, but everyone said Fort would fight on their own. That it was too risky to re-open the other Weyrs again. “You should visit the archive. Before you go home.”

That was all the prompting it took for Lessa to flee this strange conversation, this dangerous woman who recognized alchemical arrays, this crowded dining cavern where anyone could have overheard them. She ducked through the crowd, listening to the murmur of dragon voices in her mind, steering her clear of Ruathan and Fort Hold visitors who might recognize her, harpers who thrived on gossip, wing leaders and seconds who sneered at her for dining with Lazy Jora. All of the dragon voices in her mind right now were female, Lessa realized, just as she reached the entrance to the Bowl and a green rider winked at her.

No time to wonder about that. Her uncle was back in there, waiting to escort her home after the Hatching feast. She’d never get another chance at the Weyr archives, not until the next clutch, and that might not be until the new queen matured. What she’d find in there she didn’t know, but the same drive that sent her into the depths of Ruatha’s own archives (and once, the Harper Hall’s) spurred her feet on.

Very few chambers in a Weyr had doors. Another green rider waited by the one to the archives, flipping a key over his fingers, and nudged it open with his foot for her. A small green dragon swooped down from a high weyr to settle on the sunning-ledge over the archive chambers. _We’re not allowed in there!_ The voice was so gleeful Lessa had to clap a hand over her mouth to keep from laughing. _I’m keeping watch! You’re not allowed in either. What’s in there? Is it fun?_

“Am I...are we helping the Weyrwoman with something?” Lessa asked, as she and the green rider shut the door behind them. The rider shrugged, smiling lop-sidedly, and then stared unseeing into the shelves of hide and parchment for a moment as he conversed with his dragon. Lessa felt her own gaze unfocus for a moment as Nemorth’s voice, so much stronger and deeper than any other dragon she’d ever talked to, including the bronzes, filled her mind.

 _There is no quest that you do not make yourself. You are simply the first person who would appreciate and understand this and NOT tell the Weyrleader_.

“Jora just likes breaking rules,” the green rider said. Lessa hardly heard him, following Nemorth’s directions down the rows of shelves, to a box misleadingly labelled as logs for seven centuries ago. Spread out on a nearby work table, the true contents were thrillingly akin to Lessa’s earlier discoveries: theoretical arrays, maps of ley-lines, experiment proposals, result charts, revisions, by many hands over many Turns. The green rider whistled. “And those sure are some rules to break. Didn’t the Weyrleader order all this burned in the Bloody Turns?”

“Era of Blood,” Lessa corrected absently. She lay several maps out side by side, and traced her fingers down a lightly-drawn array for tapping into the groundwater for irrigation.

 _Everyone knows queens don’t flame_ , Nemorth said smugly.

Alone among their peers, the Fort-Ruatha Coalition had never given in to the siren song of alchemy when its fire spread from Keroon over the whole of the Northern Continent. Held onto the sure ways, the tried and true. Yet even they could not resist...resist _studying_ it, reading the result of other’s experiments, the design plans of the ever-shifting Midlands Holds, the beautiful arrays inked so carefully...alchemy had been so promising. Ruatha had come the closest to breaking from the old ways, some of Lessa’s ancestors pleading with the Weyrleader to consider _including_ it in their endless fight against Thread.

Then came the Pass That Never Was. Then alchemy turned from a promise of creation to a tool of destruction. The Midlands and the Eastern Claw of the Northern Continent tore themselves apart, soaking Pern in blood for most of a century. No one went untouched.

“Always figured the harpers just hid theirs somewhere,” the green rider said. “Guess they hid ours too.”

“The queen riders hid it,” Lessa said. That’s what Nemorth meant about flame. And if...if the Weyrwomen had all known of this, had all kept it safe, then maybe...maybe Lessa _wasn’t_ dishonoring Ruatha by practicing alchemy. “Shards, I _wish_ I’d known this was here a sevenday ago. How can I possibly read it all _now?_ ”

“Take it with you,” the green rider said with another shrug, as his dragon and Nemorth suggested the same thing.

 _There is likely more in other Holds…_ Nemorth added slyly. _Do you not wish to seek it all out, before duty shackles you here?_

“You can _fly_ ,” Lessa snapped back irritably, but she was already tidying the Weyr’s secret alchemical notes into a bundle. She smiled at the green rider. “Would you mind taking me home, now? I’ve some packing to do.”

“Visiting that harper brother of yours? The one in Amestris?”

“Yes…” Lessa said. She traced her fingers along the last map. “But I think I’ll take the long way.”


	3. A Young Girl Stands In The Imperial Gardens

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Years in the past, but not many…”

Your name is LAN FAN. It is not your birthday today, but you are still nine Turns old anyway. You like KNIVES and LING YAO, who is your best friend, the heir of your clan, one of the many PRINCES OF XING, and currently ASLEEP ON TOP OF SOMETHING DANGEROUS.

What will you do?

> Retrieve heir from Thread Purification Pillar

Whew! Okay, best friend is safely down from that REALLY TALL BASALT PILLAR COVERED IN ALKAHESTRY SYMBOLS and is laughing at you because he was “just resting his eyes” and “not really asleep” and “thinks it’s so cool that you climb so fast!”

> Blush at compliment

You are an entire nine Turns old you do not blush at compliments anymore AAAAAAH LING DON’T POKE MY FACE.

> Wish you had a cool mask like your aunt and grandpa do

You do not have a cool mask yet because you haven’t finished your training. You’re not even an OFFICIAL BODYGUARD on this trip to the IMPERIAL PALACE, you are just a DECOY to confuse the other clans who might try to assassinate LING YAO while he’s formally meeting his father, the EMPEROR OF XING and delivering a respectful tribute from the Yao Clan. The respectful tribute is a new sword forged by LING YAO’S MOTHER who is the head of your clan and also the BEST BLACKSMITH IN ALL OF XING.

There aren’t very many blacksmiths in Xing, because the Southern Continent has even fewer metal deposits than the Northern Continent, but the head of your clan is the best. She might even be the BEST BLACKSMITH ON ALL OF PERN but Xing only trades with the southernmost tips of the Claws, not the mountain Holds like Crom, so you can’t be sure. Logically. In your heart, you are very sure.

> Examine the Really Tall Basalt Pillar Covered In Alkahestry Symbols

You mean the THREAD PURIFICATION PILLAR? It’s, well, it’s a really tall basalt pillar covered in alkahestry symbols. There are five of them around the IMPERIAL CITY and five smaller scoria pillars around the IMPERIAL PALACE, created by the GREAT SAGE over four hundred Turns ago, at the beginning of the LONG INTERVAL. It was also the beginning of the XING EMPIRE, because when the GREAT SAGE arrived you were fifty families living around the bay, just starting your expansion into the rest of the continent via canal. Before practicing alkahestry, your people survived THREADFALL with TUBERMAN GRUBS, FIRELIZARDS, and SHEER BADASSERY.

Okay. Maybe SHEER BADASSERY was really an EXTENSIVE EXPLORATION of the local cave systems during the INTERVAL the first families arrived in, and SHELTERS built into the bay, river, and nearest lakes out of stone. Still, though, surviving THREADFALL out on the water, sitting in a boat or a floating wooden dock, with only the stone roof held up by three to five pillars, no walls at all, was WAY MORE BADASS than hiding deep in a mountain like the Northerners did.

> Summon your firelizard

You don’t have a firelizard. Your aunt says you have to get better at sensing chi before it’s safe for you to have one. Some people bond with their firelizards and expand their senses, but some people get overwhelmed, and no one knows how it’ll go until it happens the first time. Your aunt has an entire fair of them that scout for her, and neither of your parents were overwhelmed, so you’ll probably be just fine. Probably.

LING YAO doesn’t have a firelizard yet either, which makes you feel better. You’d feel even more better if he’d stop trying to climb the flowering tree next to the THREAD PURIFICATION PILLAR to get a better look at the symbols on it.

> Examine the alkahestry symbols

Fine. You don’t know as much as LING YAO does about alkahestry, and he doesn’t know as much as some of his RIVAL IMPERIAL HEIRS do, but you can still climb a tree better than all of them. You can even get farther out on the tree branch than LING YAO can and actually touch the pillar without overbalancing and needing to spring up to the top just to keep from falling. There are a lot of planets and moons, and a sun, and way above your head, a dragon circling a star.

Some people worry that the ten pillars could be used to do something awful, but the GREAT SAGE wasn’t that dumb. These ones, and the identical ones around several other clan’s capitals (including yours) can only be used for PURIFYING THREAD, no matter the intentions of anyone channelling chi through them. You’re...not actually sure what PURIFYING THREAD means. Does it kill it? Turn it into ash? Force it through a life-cycle at high speed? Turn it into something else? The alkahestrists know. You’ll find out in the NINTH PASS.

> Be Ling Yao.

You cannot be LING YAO, you are too busy being LAN FAN and keeping LING YAO from falling out of a tree.

> Be Lan Fan during the Ninth Pass

You cannot be LAN FAN during the NINTH PASS yet, you have to get through the rest of the LONG INTERVAL first. Besides, that’s for the rest of the clan to worry about. Your job is to keep LING YAO alive and make sure he becomes the CROWN PRINCE before the EMPEROR OF XING dies.

> Take over the Empire

You cannot take over the XING EMPIRE. The EMPEROR has not yet announced what the inheritance conditions are.

> Fall out of a tree, land on your best friend, and vow to help him become Crown Prince

You do that.


	4. Amestris, present day.

“Roy! Have I shown you Elicia’s latest sketch? It’s a _flower_ growing out of a _teacup_ instead of a _flowerpot!_ Isn’t that just the cleverest thing you’ve ever seen?”

“Yes, Hughes,” Roy said, voice muffled by the handful of papers Maes pressed up against his face. At this range all he could make out was a wax-crayon scribble, but it was still a truthful answer. The Elrics had recently snuck into restricted, derelict, rusty deathtrap of a government laboratory, and nearly gotten themselves blown up. Maes could have shown him a blank, ripped piece of paper and told him his three-Turn-old daughter was experimenting with deconstructionalism and he’d still think her more clever than the Elrics right now.

“And in _this_ one she drew all the flowers growing out of one spot to make an even _bigger_ flower.” Maes sighed happily and shoved the sketches back into his jacket. In the brief instant before they vanished, Roy made out more wax-crayon scrawl. They _might_ have resembled flowers, if every petal was a different shape, size, and color, but Maes had no business referring to any of it as a flowerpot, let alone a teacup. “Speaking of bigger, you would not _believe_ how tall she’s getting.”

“How tall?” Roy asked. They stopped walking for a moment, automatically stepping to the side of the hallway so other soldiers and administrators could get past them. Maes gestured with one hand next to his leg.

“About- no, wait, she’s taller than- oh but when she jumped off the couch she could reach- no it we’re talking height-” Maes laughed at himself as an officer from another department walked by. “You’ll just have to have dinner with us tonight, Roy!”

“You know I have to leave this afternoon to get back to Eastern by-”

“Aw, come on!” Maes slung an arm over Roy’s shoulders and started them walking again.  “I’m sure that awful runnerbeast of yours would be happier leaving in the morning, and besides, Gracia found her grandmother’s bubbly pie recipe! Didn’t you always say you wanted to try that someday?”

Roy stiffened, glancing over at Maes. Above the goofy smile and behind the glasses, Maes’ eyes were deadly serious. Roy forced himself into a surprised expression. “How do you even _remember_ stuff like that? I must have told you back in the Academy!”

“That’s the job of a best friend!” Maes lifted his arm off Roy’s shoulders to ruffle his hair, making Roy roll his eyes and huffily smooth it back down, pretending not to see a senior officer’s secretary laughing at them. “So, dinner?”

“I suppose my runnerbeast _could_ use more rest...before Lieutenant Hawkeye kills us both for all the paperwork backing up.”

“That’s the spirit!”

~

“A firelizard, huh? I thought only military types has those.”

“Ah, well, I spent some time in southern Keroon…”

Al lifted his head up briefly to chirp politely at the woman driving the wagon. _Brother, don’t lie to our hosts._ Ed sent back a mental grumble of annoyance because Al was being a brat and they both knew it. The truth was _misleading_.

“...and I’m a State Alchemist.”

“That explains it,” the driver said. Curiosity satisfied, she went right back to ignoring them. Over the gentle rumble of the wheels and wagonbeasts, Al heard Winry chatting cheerfully with someone in the back about axles and struts and things. If he concentrated and tuned out Ed’s much closer mind, he could feel her happiness for the conversation, and excitement to visit Rush Valley.

Ed was _not_ excited to visit Dublith. Neither was Al. If he wasn’t careful, their combined nerves at disappointing Teacher were going to send Al into a scared fit, and if it got _really_ bad this body’s instincts might teleport him to safety before he calmed down.

It was always embarrassing when that happened. And scary. Sometimes he went to the bluffs of the Keroonian beach where Kitten had hatched, sometimes he went to Resembool. He always teleported back to Ed as fast as he could, but since he needed a clear visual, and scary moments were often when Ed got in over his head, which was usually a fight, which usually moved around a lot, Al had to go back to the last place he strongly remembered and then _find_ Ed.

Thankfully Ed was loud and easy to find.

(Al hated going _between_ , avoided it whenever he could, because it was cold and dark and made him remember the day they tried to bring back Mom and he didn’t know _why_ )

So right now Al was going to stay _right_ where he was now, thank you very much, curled up around Ed’s shoulders half under the collar of his coat, and try to sleep. _Not_ think about Teacher’s face when she inevitably heard Ed call the bronze firelizard with him ‘Alphonse’ instead of ‘Kitten’, _not_ think about creepy talking-watch-wher Barry the Chopper’s taunts that Al was just an uplifted chimera, _not_ think that homunculus calling Ed a ‘sacrifice’...

Oh goodness that was a lot to not think about.

“Hey, Al,” Ed said softly. Al curled tighter around him. “No, come on, look at this, it’s neat. Weren’t you telling me not to mope?” Ed scooped Al up and re-draped him so he was just over one shoulder, and pointed at the rolling hills they were passing through. “See? Look at the plants.”

Blue-ish green grass blanketed the landscape, but all around were wide patches of other plants; dark green fronds, wild flowers, a few berry patches.

“Go and look from above, Al,” Ed said, grinning. “For science!”

Al took off into the sky. He wasn’t quite fast enough to hear the amused snort from the wagon driver. _Another one for your ‘alchemists are crazy’ collection,_ Al quipped at Ed, trying to project amusement too. Normal people didn’t talk to firelizards like they were human.

_...they’re all circles,_ Al said. He sent Ed the image too, and got back a feeling of smugness. _Is this botanical alchemy? Someone’s old code?_

He could _hear_ Ed laughing at him. Fine. He’d just stay up here and figure it out himself. The plants in the circles were too random even for code, let alone a proposed array. Hm. They were far from Central now, away from the farmlands that supported the city, but not yet into the southern region. This was wilder country. Shelling scars? No, that would be indented ground with the same, if younger, plants, and this was different plants on level ground. Well, level with the rest of the hills. Besides, this area of Keroon had become Amestris before they began using explosives.

Maybe a fungus? Those grew out from a starting point, and these new plants could be ones that ate the fungus-

Oh.

They were Threadscars.

He hadn’t realized there were any left.

Al stayed up in the air a while longer, enjoying the sun and the breeze and the view. He didn’t fly back down until he really _was_ tired enough to sleep. Winry came forward to sit on the front bench just as Al dove, and held out her arm for him to land on.

“Nice flight, Al?”

He chirped at her and rubbed his chin against hers. She didn’t get words from him like Ed did, but she could sense his emotions better than anyone else.

“Ed, go lie down, you’re still healing,” Winry ordered. Ed opened his mouth to argue, but Al yawned, admitting he was tired too. Ed rolled his eyes, scooped Al off Winry’s arm (like he used to scoop Kitten off Al’s, when this body was just a normal firelizard), and took him to the back of the wagon for a nap.

_Did you see the Threadscars...before?_ Al asked sleepily. Ed didn’t like thinking about that day any more than Al did, but he couldn’t remember seeing Threadscars like this from their books _or_ their time with Teacher.

“We both did,” Ed said. Al huffed. “We did! We passed through the eastern half of these hills with Teacher. We just didn’t see them from above.” Ed lay down on the bunk built into the side of the wagon. The driver’s sister slept in the opposite bunk, snoring. Al draped himself over Ed’s chest.

After a long moment, long enough that Al would have though Ed was asleep if he couldn’t feel his mind churning, Ed said “Remember those crawlers we ate? On the island?”

_And those fish._

“Right.” Ed’s voice got softer from philosophy and sleepiness. “And someday the crawlers and plants and maybe even some fish will eat us. Thread eats too. And then it dies. And the plants eat it, and grow, and die, and other plants eat them…”

_All is one,_ Al said. It was hard to whisper with your mind, but Al tried.

“Yeah.”

~

Gracia was, as ever, a delightful host, and just as sneaky as her husband, taking Elicia to the park after dinner to “run all those sillies out!” so she wouldn’t overhear anything she shouldn’t. She coaxed Roy and Maes’ firelizards to the park as well, which frankly worried Roy. It wasn’t often Maes thought his news was shocking enough to risk a dangerously emotional display from the creatures.

Roy got a decently ridiculous public outburst from Gem when he first arrived at Central (for a conference with his superiors that could have been done over telephone) and tried to visit Fullmetal in the hospital. No, his subordinate wasn’t resting. He wasn’t even in Central anymore. Ed and Al had caught a ride with a trading caravan heading for their old teacher’s town, Ed’s automail mechanic tagging along with visit Rush Valley.

“At least he didn’t try to get on a runnerbeast yet,” Maes had said, as Gem let out the same defeated sigh as Roy. Were the Elrics simply incapable of sitting still for five minutes?

Now Maes closed the windows and turned up the radio. “You saw the paper?” he asked.

“That busker one of yours?” Roy asked. It had made the front page for a day; a musician from Telgar found dead, stabbed, in a telephone booth. A much less sensational article this morning said Central military police ruled it a mugging gone wrong, despite his wallet and guitar still being on his person.

“No. He was a harper.”

“...not really Telgarian, then.”

“Ruathan, trained at the original Harper Hall, and sent out to see what the rest of Pern is up to.” Maes settled down on the chair across from Roy, tapping his fingertips together. “His _contact_ was in Telgar, and has been made aware of his murder. The problem, Roy, is that he was doing me a favor. I suspect that favor got him killed, as telephone lines don’t _go_ to Telgar.”

Roy dropped his face down into his hands. “Shit.”

“It gets worse,” Maes said grimly. “You’ve heard about that mad alchemist making her way through the Midlands?”

“The Thread proselytizer?” Roy looked back up. “None of them ever make it out here.” Fort, Ruatha, and even High Reaches occasionally threw out Thread-doomsayers who trekked the Northern Continent yelling at people to return to the old stone holds, tithe to the Weyr, and scour their greenery. Most burnt out or pissed off the wrong person before reaching Amestris, and only the ones that took to sailing ever reached Nerat.

“This one’s different,” Maes said. Well, true enough, Roy didn’t think any of them had been alchemists. “She’s not telling anyone to go back to the old ways, Roy. She’s talking about Thread, what it can do, and then messing around with the local alchemists to try out architectural arrays that would get people through a Fall alive. Our man in the delta region said the locals started putting heavy glass over their open windows after she passed through.” Maes grinned. “That’s when she’s not making a nuisance of herself getting into sealed archives. Crom and Telgar both chased her out. A bit like those two troublemakers of yours.”

Maes was the only person outside Roy’s team (and Ed’s automail mechanic)  who talked about the Elrics that way. As _two_ maelstrom a of chaos. Most people just complained about Ed.

“Fullmetal mentioned his alchemy teacher doing the same, once,” Roy said, remembering suddenly.

“Raiding archives?”

“Teaching people about Thread.” Roy drummed his fingers on his face. “He also said ‘good thing too, since I’m too busy to do it’.”

“Well that’s ominous!” Maes said, and laughed. “Have any rumors given you the alchemist’s name?”

“I believe the Greenfield newspapers simply called her ‘that maniac’.” He grinned too, despite the tension of waiting for Maes to drop the other shoe. “Though along the southern coast she’s a hero for fighting against pirates.”

“Lessa of Ruatha,” Maes said. “That busker was her brother.”

“Ah.”

“Their father is Lord Kale.”

“... _ah_.”


	5. Threads, Entangling

Teacher could hear him.

She was furious and sad and incredulous and nearly opened Ed’s wounds back up kicking sense into his head, and _she could hear him_.

Al spent the rest of the day flying madly around the butcher shop, talking nonstop. Teacher’s husband Sig still needed someone to translate, but he didn’t talk much anyway. Al could talk about alchemy, and their adventures, and the cute cats that come to steal Sig’s scraps, and _Ed didn’t have to translate_. Teacher just answered! And asked questions back! Without any pause!

This also meant that Teacher could interrogate him.

“What do you _mean_ you didn’t see the Red Star?”

 _I don’t remember what happened after we_ -

Teacher grabbed Al’s tail, yanking him right out of the air, and grabbed his neck lightning-fast to twist his face towards yours. “Have you even _tried_ to remember?”

 _...no_. Al chirped, ashamed, scared. He didn’t _want_ to remember. That night was just ruined hope, pain, fear, then waking up in the wrong body with a seal carved into his back. Why would he want to remember that? Ed said he knew why Teacher was so steely about Thread, after, but he didn’t _do_ what she did, didn’t travel _just_ to make better shelters and re-route aquifers and change how people farmed. Wouldn’t they be doing that, if it was so urgent?

“Ed!” Teacher released Al to grab Ed again. Whoops. Al hadn’t meant to leak that much. “You-”

“Hey, we haven’t been totally useless!” Ed threw his hands up defensively, not bothering to break free. “I always made stuff Thread-proof when I fixed it! But…”

His voice lowered, that horrible guilt Al hated pouring out of him.

“But I have to get...get Al his body back.”

Teacher let go. Ed dropped his hands, face dropping too.

“The Red Star is  _Turns_ away,” Ed said. “And _you_ were helping people and...and once Al’s fixed we can...we can _both_ help…Al’s already helping, you should see him draw arrays, he’s like _lightning_.”

It took Al just as long to re-learn array-drawing with his new hands and his tail as it had Ed to re-learn writing with his left hand. Al’s lines were smooth now, precise. Ed’s...weren’t.

Al didn’t need telempathy to notice Teacher’s sadness, not with her shoulders falling like that, her face changing, the crack in her voice when she said “Oh, boys…” But he _did_ have telempathy, now, and Teacher’s sadness weighed down the room, pulling him out of the air to wrap around her shoulders as she hugged Ed. “My foolish, foolish boys…”

~

Lessa tumbled off her runnerbeast’s back, rolling up onto her feet, half-sliding down the hill. It would wait for her. Whatever strange thing was happening on the lower road _wouldn’t_.

“Hey!”

“Augh!” The short man poking the small figure on the ground leapt up, jumping away. “Don’t hurt me! I don’t have anything to steal!”

“That why you’re stealing from a little kid?” Lessa asked. She’d landed too close to pull out her chalk, so she put a hand on her biggest belt-knife instead.

“No! Of course not!” The short man went instantly from terrified to offended. “I was giving her _water_.” He held his hands up defensively. One of them _did_ have a waterskin.

“Hm.” Lessa stepped closer, making the man jump back another few feet. The child on the ground blinked at her. Then her hair blinked. Lessa froze. Looked again. Ah. There was a small animal of some kind _also_ collapsed on the ground, just behind the girl’s head, coiled up with her braids. “Toss me the water,” Lessa ordered. When the man obeyed, Lessa helped the girl sit up and take a few sips. The man shuffled from foot to foot nervously. Probably not going to be a problem, then.

“Hey,” Lessa said, much more softly than before. “Are you all right?”

“Yes…” the girl said. She coughed. “Thank you.” The strange creature crawled onto her lap, mewling piteously. Lessa stared. It was a _firelizard_ , but not like any of the ones she’d seen in hidden beaches along Big Bay. It was half their size, for one, with a mottled black and white hide. Not a single color anywhere but its eyes. “Oh! Shao Mei!” The girl tried to sit up further, looking at Lessa. “Please, she needs water too.”

Gently guiding a waterskin’s neck into the very sharp mouth of a mutant firelizard was _not_ something Lessa had ever expected to do. But her life had been full of unexpected things since she took Weyrwoman Jora’s advice (and her alchemy records), so she barely spent a minute internally boggling over it before getting on with what needed to be done.

“You,” Lessa said, pointing at the anxious man. “Walk my runnerbeast down here.”

With some food along with water, the little girl, Mei, turned out to be cheerful, chatty, and the first person Lessa met on her quest who took her warning about Thread as a _given_.

“Oh, of course!” Mei said. “That’s why it’s so important that I discover the secret of immortality and become the Emperor’s successor soon. It would be very bad to enter the Pass with no official Heir.”

“Isn’t the eldest the heir by default, until the Lord Holder picks someone else?” Lessa asked.

“Not in Xing,” Mei said. Lessa nodded; she’d run across a fair number of governing styles in the Midlands. Aside from the Coalition and High Reaches, Xing sounded the closest to the original Charter. Even Nabol simply had a series of Wardens instead of a real Lord Holder. Xing just changed the name.

Yoki, the short man, dismissed both Thread and the very idea of immortality. He had an abandoned house they could rest in nearby, though, with more food, so Lessa ignored his rude comments and kept chatting with Mei. The little girl found riding a runnerbeast (while Lessa led it) to be a novel experience; apparently the majority of travel in Xing was by boat, either along the coast, or down canals and rivers.

“I’m from Ruatha, myself,” Lessa told her.

“No wonder you’re crazy,” Yoki muttered.

Shao Mei curled around Mei’s shoulders, tail dangling down her back like a third braid. Lessa could pick up a hum of emotions from her, just like the wild ones of Big Bay.

The abandoned house was just as depressing as all the others in the region; roof mostly gone, walls burnt, well crumbling. Was this the sort of thing Akale wrote home to Masterharper Robinton about? That Amestris was so busy with wars that they even neglected to repair the damage in peacetime? Telgar was a nasty neighbor to have, with Lady Thella holding the reins, but they were far from the north-west border here.

No sooner had Lessa thought that when a second man arrived, scarred across his face, bleeding from the leg, irritated to see Lessa and Mei. Maybe Yoki really was a road-robber after all. Lessa carefully lowered her mental shields to see what emotions she could pick up from him.

Mei, sweet child, cheerfully ignored the gruff order to leave, and healed the scarred man’s leg.

By drawing a pentacle with chalk and sticking throwing-knives in the five points.

“Did you just _heal_ him?” Lessa asked, crouching down for a better look, all concern for safety gone out the (crumbling) window. Yoki wasn’t a threat and if someone else could injure Scar, Lessa could too. _Healing_ was far more important. “Can you do that to any living thing? Is it permanent? Does it take away your life-force? All the healing alchemists I’ve met just use it to place sutures or re-arrange organs and let the body heal on its own. Does one of those knives have a Philosopher’s Stone?” She hadn’t _seen_ any odd lumps in the grip-wraps, and there were no inset decorative stones, but you never knew. Scar’s stare grew more intent with each question.

“This is Alkahestry from the land of Xing,” Mei explained proudly.

“Oh, so you’re tapping the Dragon’s Pulse, not a life-force,” Lessa said. That was good. All the text fragments she’d found about Philosopher’s Stones creeped her out. She’d never met an alkehestrist before, but she’d found several slim books along the southern Telgar river, brought North by Xingian traders decades ago. _Dragon’s Pulse_ was a good name for the motion of plate tectonics. Lessa approved.

“Alchemist,” Scar said in a grim voice. Lessa looked up from Mei’s pentacle and knives. “State?”

“Pardon?”

“Are you a state alchemist?”

“No!” Lessa leapt to her feet. “Don’t insult me!”

“Wha- wha- what?!” Yoki sputtered. “That’s not an insult! State alchemists are incredibly powerful! Even if they are full of themselves…” he trailed off in a mumble.

“Alchemy should never be used to wage war!” Lessa snapped back. “ _Nothing_ should be used to wage war! Alchemy can do so many things to make life better, to protect Pern from Thread. It’s bad enough that all of these- these- these _states_ ,” Lessa spat the word, “fight amongst themselves, killing people in the name of expanding their holds past when any Lord can control in a Pass. But to take the _one thing_ that can make a new hold in a day, that can transform a shelterless death trap of a farm into a self-sufficient hold, and use it for _evil-!_ ”

Lessa gnashed her teeth. Still sitting on the floor, Scar gave her a slow nod.

~

Someone in Dublith smelled like blood, and they were watching Al.

Smell wasn’t the right word, it was in his _head_ not his snout, but there wasn’t a better word. Whoever it was _buzzed_ , too. Like a crowded market. The people who had dragged Ed out of the laboratory before it burned down buzzed bloodily too. If they had emotions, he couldn’t read them.

Al grumbled in frustration and shot high into the sky. Teacher told him to meditate, to center himself so he could contemplate _that night_ without panicking. Alchemists pursued knowledge. Al _must_ have seen the Gate. Running from it wasn’t what an alchemist _did_.

Grounded firelizards were sleeping, eating, or anxious, which ruled out perching somewhere to meditate. Al flew instead. The higher the thermals took him, the less he felt of the people in town, the easier it was to center himself. Wherries didn’t mess with firelizards, not full-grown ones like Kitten had been. Al could hover for hours.

Endless blue turned to endless light, to endless dark, to blue again.

Nothing was endless.

Everything was.

Why hadn’t he seen the Gate?

When Al spiralled down again, frustrated, the not-smell of blood was joined by the _actual_ smell of blood. A cheerful “over here!” sort of whistle drew Al’s attention towards an alley, where a man in a fur-lined vest and smoked glasses waved a handful of raw steak towards him.

Al launched backwards, landed on a roof across the street, and hissed. The man’s face fell.

“I just wanna be friends!” Oh, he had pointy teeth. _That_ wasn’t disturbing at all. Al mentally called out to tell Ed-

Right. Ed was a day’s ride away at the nearest military outpost, taking his Turnly exam to keep his state alchemy license. Teacher could _hear_ Al, but not very far. Al shouted that there was a strange man waving meat at him anyway, and hoped she heard it.

“You’re flying around town all alone,” the man said. He took a slow step out of the alley. “That’s no good. I got friends, they could be your friends too. They call me Greed. Wonder what they’d call you?” Another step. Al felt the buzz again. “You flew all the way up there and never dived at anything. So I’m curious. You’re curious, yeah?” Greed curled his hand over the steak, showing the ourorobos tattoo on the back of it. “You got a scar too, under that wing of yours.”

Al went cold. How long had Greed been watching him, how _close_  to see the binding sigil carved into his back? Did he know what it meant? Was he going to report Ed for human transmutation?

Forget learning why Greed and the others were so strange, Al needed to _leave_. But he couldn’t just fly back to Teacher’s place, not when he didn’t know if Greed could follow him.

Al hissed again, screwed up his courage, and went _between_.

~

Greed slumped. Gone. Dammit. He was _never_ gonna get his own firelizard at this rate.

“You came on too strong, boss,” Martel called out from her perch on the trash cans.

“I talked about stuff we had in common! That’s basic friendship making!”

“Yeah but firelizards are, ya know, shy,” Martel hopped off the trash can just in time for Greed to kick it. “Told ya, we gotta get to some beach. Find a nest before the military does.”

“Psh, the beach.” Greed waved his hand, dripping blood from the steak on the ground. “The beach is in the plan! When we’re getting a boat to Boll.”

“And then a caravan up to Fort,” Martel said. She’d heard this all before. She stuck her hands in her pockets, walking next to Greed, turning automatically back to the Devil’s Nest. “And then we sneak onto that indoor beach-”

“The Hatching Sands,” Greed corrected, pushing up his smoked glasses with the hand _not_ holding raw meat.

“Without your freaky aura or my tunnel-snake smell alerting all the dragons like it does the firelizards…”

“And we all Impress dragons!” Greed finished. He flung an arm over her shoulders. “Gotta figure out that whole immortality thing first, though. Can’t die and leave a heartbroken dragon!”

~

Lessa parted ways with Mei and the two men when they reached Central. Mei had been torn, wanting them to stay together, until Lessa pointed out her odd firelizard ought to be able to find them all again. This cheered the tiny princess up considerably.

A question here, a description there, an exchange of coins or bit of repair work. All her skills for tracking down alchemy texts and alchemists themselves turned to tracking down her brother. Akale should have been easy to find. _He_ should have found _her_ , told her she was reckless, like he used to when she climbed the fire-heights, and hugged her half to death.

All her questions brought her two newspaper articles and a grave.

Lessa didn’t have the papers, only managed to read them because the Central library had a periodicals archive. She didn’t have flowers, like the mourners in the distance did. Amestris did everything backwards. Flowers and stone for the dead instead of the living.

Lessa traced her fingers along the carved name: _Orli Morett_. “Couldn’t resist the reference, could you?” Lessa said into the grey mist of early morning. “You _idiot_ , Akale.”  Lessa’s knees hit the ground with an ungraceful thud, her grip tight on the stone, her forehead pressing against the name. “Moreta’s ride ends with them _dead_ , you idiot, you stupid romantic _idiot_ -”

A long time later, Lessa stood again.

What was she going to tell their parents? Their siblings? How was she going to get him _home?_ Should she even try? The newspaper called him Telgaran, he’d made up a name, he was a _harper_. If she demanded Lord Kale’s son be given a proper escort back to Ruatha, what sort of hard work would that undo?

What work had Akale left undone?


End file.
